Little song for big John

This is probably the best piece of literary criticism I’ll ever craft. A self portrait from a ”Self Portrait” about a self portrait. The three body problem indeed, it’s funhouse mirrors all the way down. Anyway . . .

AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION 

READYMADE AS A SONNET

 IN ‘A CONVEX MIRROR’

“But what is this universe the [portrait] of 

As it veers in and out, back and forth, 

Refusing to surround us and still the only

Thing we can see? [Epiphany] once 

Tipped the scales but now is shadowed, invisible,

Though mysteriously present, around somewhere.

But we know it cannot be sandwiched 

Between two adjacent moments, that its windings 

Lead nowhere except to further tributaries 

And that these empty themselves into a vague 

Sense of something that can never be known 

Even though it seems likely that each of us 

Knows what it is and is capable of 

Communicating it to the other.”

”

You Already Know

AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION AS MUCH ADU ABOUT NOTHING

“Didn’t I tell you what I believe,

didn’t I say that . . .”

Sade

Ifemi, how many more

REM cycles before 

your winged eyeliner

leaps the ravine 

of No Return to open me 

as a sommelier would 

a wine bottle—

before the bright crescents

of your nails wax across

the black sky of my back—

or before the saxophone

can’t signal sorrow?

Half icicle, half goddess,

only last night it seems

I sought your scent

between a gap 

scarlet as the flesh 

of a black watermelon,

yet glossy enough

to lapse all logic.

A seeking which

leaves my nose craving 

a crow-shaded tangle

most men pray 

to be saved from.

Freckled cheeks of Jesus,

who can tell how many

calligraphic kisses

might be needed to spell 

or dispel what butterflies

write in rooms filled

with strawberry irises?

It’s been written

—since the saxophone

signals tomorrow—

that a fool for roses

is a fool for rain,

but what tool could

begin to uproot

those twin legends

still blooming into heels

stiletto enough

to fell a forest entire?

Ifemi, I seek the oneness

of two palms

freed or fried 

as the symbols inside

a theorem derived 

from three types of feral.

And yet not decipherable

or functionally defined. 

A caress the saxophone

seems to borrow—

unless we forget

my being taken

or mistaken about

the need to be touched 

or the difference between

a half wound and what

wound up happening.

What does it mean

to remain tethered

like a gothic hawk

to your ankle tattoo’s

brassy passion 

for adinkra charms

or police bracelets?

Did I hum

the wrong lyrics

to the right songs

or the right lyrics

to the wrong songs?

So many dawns

have passed since your hair

swung over a bedpost

of Old Crow moans

to leave me

sizzling between 

a last flame of bud & 

that first good buy.

How many moons

before you stop me 

from being spotted

like a Luna moth

in the halo of a porch light,

turning again & again

to unlock wonders

with keys hidden under

the tea rose carpet

of yet another 

lover’s tongue?

BHM!

AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION AS

AN ECHOLOCATION OF BLACKNESS

(after ashes)

A mythical village filled with echoes 

of talking drums from Ibadan,

or the sweet potatoes that root 

as some still dream of planting yams?

The musk of a hand carved mask,

or a funky lover feeling bituminous?

Could you spot it perhaps on the spectrum?

Do y’all hum or alhamdulillah?

O Lorde—do we decide to star it or tar it

as others have tried to find asphalt

in our absence of photons or perhaps

recite [carbon & oxygen & aluminum]

tho not as a ploy of blaxploitation

where most of the kinks got afro-picked out

and what was left only looked like a globe.

Or a melanite halo if some hot Mama needs

to braid or lay her baby hair for miles ahead

with [boron & lanthanum & carbon

& potassium & neon & sulfur & sulphur].

What elemental truth isn’t melasomorphic?

And yet, don’t we still whisper to cross it 

as if fingers or streets or an ocean

—to seek a return to the orishas tho

I often think they over hear.

So what. Don’t stuff your fingers 

in your ears or count the pentecost.

Don’t ask if that grammar has a rosary

or recipe written in cornrows on her head. 

Instead, address a question of the talking drum

—in what dream of eggshell shoes 

could these midnight blues even indigo?